Everybody Wants Some!!, the new film written and directed by Richard Linklater, is being officially pitched as a spiritual sequel to Dazed and Confused, the belatedly beloved sophomore effort from the filmmaker. Dazed and Confused was something of a dud … Continue reading Now Playing: Everybody Wants Some!!
208. King Crimson, “Elephant Talk” Sure, there are many ways the King Crimson single “Elephant Talk” lives on, but perhaps its most unique legacy is lending its name to a groundbreaking web-based fan site. Well before most were adept at relating addresses with a well placed @, King Crimson fan Toby Howard started a newsletter meant to be distributed via email. Dubbed “Elephant Talk,” the first issue was distributed in the summer of 1991. That eventually led to a website of the same name, which further evolved into a wiki-style platform years later, after some twelve hundred plus issues over fifteen years, … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 208 – 206
Once again, the “From the Archive” feature brings you the wildly forgettable cinema of the early nineteen-nineties. Around the time Company Business was released, in 1991, Gene Hackman was openly speculating that retirement was imminent. This is the sort of … Continue reading From the Archive: Company Business
Though I grew up when Prince was at the height of his chart-dominating powers, I came to Purple One’s music late. It was my own fault. I listened to that melange of inverted pop, fiery funk, rafter-rattling rock, and provocatively challenging lyrics and I couldn’t find my entryway. I even remember standing in a record store holding vinyl copies of both Sign o’ the Times and Paul Simon’s Hearts and Bones, mulling which one to purchase, only to have a friend essentially tell me I wasn’t ready for Prince’s double album masterwork. He was right. (By now, I own it; … Continue reading One for Friday: Ani Difranco, “When You Were Mine”
Were I to write about any other topic today, it would seem strange. Even so, I don’t feel I have anything true and proper and unique to contribute to the conversation. So I’ll defer to Prince himself, who got the sentiment correct, right down to the month. Continue reading Prince Rogers Nelson, 1958 – 2016
Oh! What a Lovely War (Richard Attenborough, 1969). The feature directorial debut of Richard Attenborough adapts a hit British musical that used era-appropriate songs to slyly satirize the pretty geopolitical messiness that fed into and then prolonged World War I. Though initially intriguing in its brash theatricality, the film’s conceits quickly prove to be stiff and overly distancing. It begins to come across as a revue with only the thinnest of through lines, especially as it stretches to a overlong running time pushing two and a half hours. There are scattered pleasures, led by Maggie Smith as a bawdy music hall … Continue reading Attenborough, Feig, Peyton, Tourneur, Werker
There is a lot of beer on premises when my team gathers for The World’s Largest Trivia Contest. Despite heroic consumption levels, that means there’s also a lot of beer left over at the close of the weekend, and to the clean-up crew go the spoils. Every year, I manage to score some beauties. This time around, I went home with a growler of Ahnapee Brewery’s Fun Guy (a growler offered to me by a teammate who termed it half-full, which the picture above demonstrates may not have been the most accurate assessment). Even though my body is calling out for … Continue reading Beers I Have Known: Ahnapee Brewery Fun Guy
This past weekend, I joined a team of boisterous, brilliant, boozy, and bad ass individuals to participate in WWSP-FM’s annual staging of the World’s Largest Trivia Contest. We finished in 14th place, which is right in our range. It’s probably worth noting that placement is out of more than 350 teams. So today is recovery day. More ambitious word-slinging returns tomorrow. Continue reading 14
211. The Boomtown Rats, “I Don’t Like Mondays” I suspect every last one of my college radio cohorts back in the day knew the backstory of the most notable single the Boomtown Rats ever released. At the very least, they had the basics. The band’s lead singer and chief songwriter, Bob Geldof, composed it after encountering a news story about Brenda Spencer, a sixteen-year-old in San Diego who opened fire on a neighboring schoolyard from a window in her family home. When a reporter got her on the telephone, she explained her motivation by blandly noting, “I don’t like Mondays.” (Spencer later … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 211 – 209
The intent of this feature is to post something I’ve written that hasn’t previously shown up in this digital space, but I make exceptions on rare occasions. This is one of them, just so I can put a caboose on the train of Trivia Kickoff Movie writing. After I posted about Swingers earlier this week, a different Trivia disciple mentioned he thought that was the best Kickoff Movie that ideally suited the event, but that the best overall movie to fill that role for the station over the years was The Ice Storm. Without double-checking the list of films that … Continue reading From the Archive: Being John Malkovich
